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• Drive Online Engagement with Intuitive Portals and Websites

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  As more and more business is being conducted via online channels, engaging users and making them more productive and efficient though these online channels is becoming critical. These users could be customers, partners or employees and while the respective channels through which they interact might be different, these users do increasingly interact with your business through the Web, or mobile devices or now through various social mediums.  Businesses need a user engagement strategy and solution that allows them to deliver targeted and personalized content and applications to users through the various online mediums and touch points.  The customer experience today is made up of an ongoing set of interactions with organizations across many channels, online and offline.  The Direct channel (including sales reps, email and mail) is an important point of contact, as is the Contact Center.  Contact Centers rely on the phone as a means of interacting with customers, and also more now than ever, the Web as well.  However, the online organization is often managed separately from the Contact Center organization within a business. In-store is an important channel for retailers, offering Point-of-Service for human interactions, and Kiosks which enable self-service. Kiosks are a Web-enabled touch point but in-store kiosks are often managed by the head of retail operations, rather than the online organization.  And of course, the online channel, including customer interactions with an organization via digital means -- on the website, mobile websites, and social networking sites, has risen to paramount importance in recent years in the customer experience. Historically all of these channels have been managed separately. The result of all of this fragmentation is that the customer touch points with an organization are siloed.  Their interactions online are not known and respected in their dealings in-store.  Their calls to the contact center are not taken as input into what the website offers them when they arrive. Think of how many times you’ve fallen victim to this. Your experience with the company call center is different than the experience in-store. Your experience with the company website on your desktop computer is different than your experience on your iPad. I think you get the point. But the customer isn’t the only one we need to look at here, as employees and the IT organization have challenges as well when it comes to online engagement. There are many common tools and technologies that organizations have been using to try and engage users, whether it’s customers, employees or partners. Some have adopted different blog and wiki technologies (some hosted, some open source, sometimes embedded in platforms), to things like tagging, file sharing and content management, or composite applications for self-service applications and activity streams. Basically, there are so many different tools & technologies that each address different aspects of user engagement. Now, one of the challenges with this, is that if we look at each individual tool, typically just implementing for example a file sharing and basic collaboration solution, may meet the needs of the business user for one aspect of user engagement, but it may not be the best solution to engage with customers and partners, or it may not fit with IT standards such as integrating with their single sign on tools or their corporate website. Often, the scenario is that businesses are having to acquire multiple pieces and parts as well as build custom applications to meet their needs. Leaving customers and partners with a more fragmented way of interacting with the company. Every organization has some sort of enterprise balancing act between the needs of the business user and the needs and restrictions enforced by enterprise IT groups. As we’ve been discussing, we all know that the expectations for online engagement have changed since the days of the static, one-size fits all website. With these changes have come some very difficult organizational challenges as well. Today, as a business user, you want to engage with your customers, and your customers expect you to know who they are. They expect you to recall the details they’ve provided to you on your website, to your CSRs and to your sales people. They expect you to remember their purchases, their preferences and their problems. And they expect you to know who they are, equally well, across channels, including your web presence. This creates a host of challenges for today’s business users. Delivering targeted, relevant content online is now essential for converting prospects into customers and for engendering long term loyalty. Business users need the ability to leverage customer data from different sources to fuel their segmentation and targeting strategies and to easily set-up, manage and optimize online campaigns. Also critical, they need the ability to accomplish these things on-the-fly, at the speed of the marketplace, while making iterative improvements.  These changing expectations put a host of demands on the IT organization as well. The web presence must be able to scale to support the delivery of personalized and targeted content to thousands of site visitors without sacrificing performance. And integration between systems becomes more important as well, as organizations strive to obtain one view of the customer culled from WCM data, CRM data and more. So then, how do you solve these challenges and meet the growing demands of your users?  You need a solution that: Unifies every customer interaction across all channels Personalizes the products and content that interest the customer and to the device Delivers targeted promotions to the right customer Engages and improve employee productivity Provides self-service access to applications Includes embedded in-context social   So how then do you achieve this level of online engagement, complete customer experience and engage your employees? The answer: Oracle WebCenter. If you want to learn how to get there, we encourage you to attend this webcast on Thursday Drive Online Engagement with Intuitive Portals and Websites, where we'll talk about how you are able to transform your portal experience and optimize online engagement -- making your portals more interactive and more engaging across multiple channels. Register today!

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• Subterranean IL: The ThreadLocal type

  - by Simon Cooper

  I came across ThreadLocal<T> while I was researching ConcurrentBag. To look at it, it doesn't really make much sense. What's all those extra Cn classes doing in there? Why is there a GenericHolder<T,U,V,W> class? What's going on? However, digging deeper, it's a rather ingenious solution to a tricky problem. Thread statics Declaring that a variable is thread static, that is, values assigned and read from the field is specific to the thread doing the reading, is quite easy in .NET: [ThreadStatic] private static string s_ThreadStaticField; ThreadStaticAttribute is not a pseudo-custom attribute; it is compiled as a normal attribute, but the CLR has in-built magic, activated by that attribute, to redirect accesses to the field based on the executing thread's identity. TheadStaticAttribute provides a simple solution when you want to use a single field as thread-static. What if you want to create an arbitary number of thread static variables at runtime? Thread-static fields can only be declared, and are fixed, at compile time. Prior to .NET 4, you only had one solution - thread local data slots. This is a lesser-known function of Thread that has existed since .NET 1.1: LocalDataStoreSlot threadSlot = Thread.AllocateNamedDataSlot("slot1"); string value = "foo"; Thread.SetData(threadSlot, value); string gettedValue = (string)Thread.GetData(threadSlot); Each instance of LocalStoreDataSlot mediates access to a single slot, and each slot acts like a separate thread-static field. As you can see, using thread data slots is quite cumbersome. You need to keep track of LocalDataStoreSlot objects, it's not obvious how instances of LocalDataStoreSlot correspond to individual thread-static variables, and it's not type safe. It's also relatively slow and complicated; the internal implementation consists of a whole series of classes hanging off a single thread-static field in Thread itself, using various arrays, lists, and locks for synchronization. ThreadLocal<T> is far simpler and easier to use. ThreadLocal ThreadLocal provides an abstraction around thread-static fields that allows it to be used just like any other class; it can be used as a replacement for a thread-static field, it can be used in a List<ThreadLocal<T>>, you can create as many as you need at runtime. So what does it do? It can't just have an instance-specific thread-static field, because thread-static fields have to be declared as static, and so shared between all instances of the declaring type. There's something else going on here. The values stored in instances of ThreadLocal<T> are stored in instantiations of the GenericHolder<T,U,V,W> class, which contains a single ThreadStatic field (s_value) to store the actual value. This class is then instantiated with various combinations of the Cn types for generic arguments. In .NET, each separate instantiation of a generic type has its own static state. For example, GenericHolder<int,C0,C1,C2> has a completely separate s_value field to GenericHolder<int,C1,C14,C1>. This feature is (ab)used by ThreadLocal to emulate instance thread-static fields. Every time an instance of ThreadLocal is constructed, it is assigned a unique number from the static s_currentTypeId field using Interlocked.Increment, in the FindNextTypeIndex method. The hexadecimal representation of that number then defines the specific Cn types that instantiates the GenericHolder class. That instantiation is therefore 'owned' by that instance of ThreadLocal. This gives each instance of ThreadLocal its own ThreadStatic field through a specific unique instantiation of the GenericHolder class. Although GenericHolder has four type variables, the first one is always instantiated to the type stored in the ThreadLocal<T>. This gives three free type variables, each of which can be instantiated to one of 16 types (C0 to C15). This puts an upper limit of 4096 (163) on the number of ThreadLocal<T> instances that can be created for each value of T. That is, there can be a maximum of 4096 instances of ThreadLocal<string>, and separately a maximum of 4096 instances of ThreadLocal<object>, etc. However, there is an upper limit of 16384 enforced on the total number of ThreadLocal instances in the AppDomain. This is to stop too much memory being used by thousands of instantiations of GenericHolder<T,U,V,W>, as once a type is loaded into an AppDomain it cannot be unloaded, and will continue to sit there taking up memory until the AppDomain is unloaded. The total number of ThreadLocal instances created is tracked by the ThreadLocalGlobalCounter class. So what happens when either limit is reached? Firstly, to try and stop this limit being reached, it recycles GenericHolder type indexes of ThreadLocal instances that get disposed using the s_availableIndices concurrent stack. This allows GenericHolder instantiations of disposed ThreadLocal instances to be re-used. But if there aren't any available instantiations, then ThreadLocal falls back on a standard thread local slot using TLSHolder. This makes it very important to dispose of your ThreadLocal instances if you'll be using lots of them, so the type instantiations can be recycled. The previous way of creating arbitary thread-static variables, thread data slots, was slow, clunky, and hard to use. In comparison, ThreadLocal can be used just like any other type, and each instance appears from the outside to be a non-static thread-static variable. It does this by using the CLR type system to assign each instance of ThreadLocal its own instantiated type containing a thread-static field, and so delegating a lot of the bookkeeping that thread data slots had to do to the CLR type system itself! That's a very clever use of the CLR type system.

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• Mixing Forms and Token Authentication in a single ASP.NET Application (the Details)

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  The scenario described in my last post works because of the design around HTTP modules in ASP.NET. Authentication related modules (like Forms authentication and WIF WS-Fed/Sessions) typically subscribe to three events in the pipeline – AuthenticateRequest/PostAuthenticateRequest for pre-processing and EndRequest for post-processing (like making redirects to a login page). In the pre-processing stage it is the modules’ job to determine the identity of the client based on incoming HTTP details (like a header, cookie, form post) and set HttpContext.User and Thread.CurrentPrincipal. The actual page (in the ExecuteHandler event) “sees” the identity that the last module has set. So in our case there are three modules in effect: FormsAuthenticationModule (AuthenticateRequest, EndRequest) WSFederationAuthenticationModule (AuthenticateRequest, PostAuthenticateRequest, EndRequest) SessionAuthenticationModule (AuthenticateRequest, PostAuthenticateRequest) So let’s have a look at the different scenario we have when mixing Forms auth and WS-Federation. Anoymous request to unprotected resource This is the easiest case. Since there is no WIF session cookie or a FormsAuth cookie, these modules do nothing. The WSFed module creates an anonymous ClaimsPrincipal and calls the registered ClaimsAuthenticationManager (if any) to transform it. The result (by default an anonymous ClaimsPrincipal) gets set. Anonymous request to FormsAuth protected resource This is the scenario where an anonymous user tries to access a FormsAuth protected resource for the first time. The principal is anonymous and before the page gets rendered, the Authorize attribute kicks in. The attribute determines that the user needs authentication and therefor sets a 401 status code and ends the request. Now execution jumps to the EndRequest event, where the FormsAuth module takes over. The module then converts the 401 to a redirect (302) to the forms login page. If authentication is successful, the login page sets the FormsAuth cookie.   FormsAuth authenticated request to a FormsAuth protected resource Now a FormsAuth cookie is present, which gets validated by the FormsAuth module. This cookie gets turned into a GenericPrincipal/FormsIdentity combination. The WS-Fed module turns the principal into a ClaimsPrincipal and calls the registered ClaimsAuthenticationManager. The outcome of that gets set on the context. Anonymous request to STS protected resource This time the anonymous user tries to access an STS protected resource (a controller decorated with the RequireTokenAuthentication attribute). The attribute determines that the user needs STS authentication by checking the authentication type on the current principal. If this is not Federation, the redirect to the STS will be made. After successful authentication at the STS, the STS posts the token back to the application (using WS-Federation syntax). Postback from STS authentication After the postback, the WS-Fed module finds the token response and validates the contained token. If successful, the token gets transformed by the ClaimsAuthenticationManager, and the outcome is a) stored in a session cookie, and b) set on the context. STS authenticated request to an STS protected resource This time the WIF Session authentication module kicks in because it can find the previously issued session cookie. The module re-hydrates the ClaimsPrincipal from the cookie and sets it.     FormsAuth and STS authenticated request to a protected resource This is kind of an odd case – e.g. the user first authenticated using Forms and after that using the STS. This time the FormsAuth module does its work, and then afterwards the session module stomps over the context with the session principal. In other words, the STS identity wins.   What about roles? A common way to set roles in ASP.NET is to use the role manager feature. There is a corresponding HTTP module for that (RoleManagerModule) that handles PostAuthenticateRequest. Does this collide with the above combinations? No it doesn’t! When the WS-Fed module turns existing principals into a ClaimsPrincipal (like it did with the FormsIdentity), it also checks for RolePrincipal (which is the principal type created by role manager), and turns the roles in role claims. Nice! But as you can see in the last scenario above, this might result in unnecessary work, so I would rather recommend consolidating all role work (and other claims transformations) into the ClaimsAuthenticationManager. In there you can check for the authentication type of the incoming principal and act accordingly. HTH

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• Use your own domain email and tired of SPAM? SPAMfighter FTW

  - by Dave Campbell

  I wouldn't post this if I hadn't tried it... and I paid for it myself, so don't anybody be thinking I'm reviewing something someone sent me! Long ago and far away I got very tired of local ISPs and 2nd phone lines and took the plunge and got hooked up to cable... yeah I know the 2nd phone line concept may be hard for everyone to understand, but that's how it was in 'the old days'. To avoid having to change email addresses all the time, I decided to buy a domain name, get minimal hosting, and use that for all email into the house. That way if I changed providers, all the email addresses wouldn't have to change. Of course, about a dozen domains later, I have LOTS of pop email addresses and even an exchange address to my client's server... times have changed. What also has changed is the fact that we get SPAM... 'back in the day' when I was a beta tester for the first ISP in Phoenix, someone tried sending an ad to all of us, and what he got in return for his trouble was a bunch of core dumps that locked up his email... if you don't know what a core dump is, ask your grandfather. But in today's world, we're all much more civilized than that, and as with many things, the criminals seem to have much more rights than we do, so we get inundated with email offering all sorts of wild schemes that you'd have to be brain-dead to accept, but yet... if people weren't accepting them, they'd stop sending them. I keep hoping that survival of the smartest would weed out the mental midgets that respond and then the jumk email stop, but that hasn't happened yet anymore than finding high-quality hearing aids at the checkout line of Safeway because of all the dimwits playing music too loud inside their car... but that's another whole topic and I digress. So what's the solution for all the spam? And I mean *all*... on that old personal email address, I am now getting over 150 spam messages a day! Yes I know that's why God invented the delete key, but I took it on as a challenge, and it's a matter of principle... why should I switch email addresses, or convert from [email protected] to something else, or have all my email filtered through some service just because some A-Hole somewhere has a site up trying to phish Ma & Pa Kettle (ask your grandfather about that too) out of their retirement money? Well... I got an email from my cousin the other day while I was writing yet another email rule, and there was a banner on the bottom of his email that said he was protected by SPAMfighter. SPAMfighter huh.... so I took a look at their site, and found yet one more of the supposed tools to help us. But... I read that they're a Microsoft Gold Partner... and that doesn't come lightly... so I took a gamble and here's what I found: I installed it, and had to do a couple things: 1) SPAMfighter stuffed the SPAMfighter folder into my client's exchange address... I deleted it, made a new SPAMfighter folder where I wanted it to go, then in the SPAMfighter Clients settings for Outlook, I told it to put all spam there. 2) It didn't seem to be doing anything. There's a ribbon button that you can select "Block", and I did that, wondering if I was 'training' it, but it wasn't picking up duplicates 3) I sent email to support, and wrote a post on the forum (not to self: reply to that post). By the time the folks from the home office responded, it was the next day, and first up, SPAMfighter knocked down everything that came through when Outlook opend... two thumbs up! I disabled my 'garbage collection' rule from Outlook, and told Outlook not to use the junk folder thinking it was interfering. 4) Day 2 seemed to go about like Day 1... but I hung in there. 5) Day 3 is now a whole new day... I had left Outlook open and hadn't looked at the PC since sometime late yesterday afternoon, and when I looked this morning, *every bit* of spam was in the SPAMfighter folder!! I'm a new paying customer After watching SPAMfighter work this morning, I've purchased a 1-year license, and I now can sit and watch as emails come in and disappear from my inbox into the SPAMfighter folder. No more continual tweaking of the rules. I've got SPAMfighter set to 'Very Hard' filtering... personally I'd rather pull the few real emails out of the SPAMfighter folder than pull spam out of the real folders. Yes this is simply another way of using the delete key, but you know what? ... it feels good :) Here's a screenshot of the stats after just about 48 hours of being onboard: Note that all the ones blocked by me were during Day 1 and 2... I've blocked none today, and everything is blocked. Stay in the 'Light!

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• Oracle NoSQL Database Exceeds 1 Million Mixed YCSB Ops/Sec

  - by Charles Lamb

  We ran a set of YCSB performance tests on Oracle NoSQL Database using SSD cards and Intel Xeon E5-2690 CPUs with the goal of achieving 1M mixed ops/sec on a 95% read / 5% update workload. We used the standard YCSB parameters: 13 byte keys and 1KB data size (1,102 bytes after serialization). The maximum database size was 2 billion records, or approximately 2 TB of data. We sized the shards to ensure that this was not an "in-memory" test (i.e. the data portion of the B-Trees did not fit into memory). All updates were durable and used the "simple majority" replica ack policy, effectively 'committing to the network'. All read operations used the Consistency.NONE_REQUIRED parameter allowing reads to be performed on any replica. In the past we have achieved 100K ops/sec using SSD cards on a single shard cluster (replication factor 3) so for this test we used 10 shards on 15 Storage Nodes with each SN carrying 2 Rep Nodes and each RN assigned to its own SSD card. After correcting a scaling problem in YCSB, we blew past the 1M ops/sec mark with 8 shards and proceeded to hit 1.2M ops/sec with 10 shards.  Hardware Configuration We used 15 servers, each configured with two 335 GB SSD cards. We did not have homogeneous CPUs across all 15 servers available to us so 12 of the 15 were Xeon E5-2690, 2.9 GHz, 2 sockets, 32 threads, 193 GB RAM, and the other 3 were Xeon E5-2680, 2.7 GHz, 2 sockets, 32 threads, 193 GB RAM.  There might have been some upside in having all 15 machines configured with the faster CPU, but since CPU was not the limiting factor we don't believe the improvement would be significant. The client machines were Xeon X5670, 2.93 GHz, 2 sockets, 24 threads, 96 GB RAM. Although the clients had 96 GB of RAM, neither the NoSQL Database or YCSB clients require anywhere near that amount of memory and the test could have just easily been run with much less. Networking was all 10GigE. YCSB Scaling Problem We made three modifications to the YCSB benchmark. The first was to allow the test to accommodate more than 2 billion records (effectively int's vs long's). To keep the key size constant, we changed the code to use base 32 for the user ids. The second change involved to the way we run the YCSB client in order to make the test itself horizontally scalable.The basic problem has to do with the way the YCSB test creates its Zipfian distribution of keys which is intended to model "real" loads by generating clusters of key collisions. Unfortunately, the percentage of collisions on the most contentious keys remains the same even as the number of keys in the database increases. As we scale up the load, the number of collisions on those keys increases as well, eventually exceeding the capacity of the single server used for a given key.This is not a workload that is realistic or amenable to horizontal scaling. YCSB does provide alternate key distribution algorithms so this is not a shortcoming of YCSB in general. We decided that a better model would be for the key collisions to be limited to a given YCSB client process. That way, as additional YCSB client processes (i.e. additional load) are added, they each maintain the same number of collisions they encounter themselves, but do not increase the number of collisions on a single key in the entire store. We added client processes proportionally to the number of records in the database (and therefore the number of shards). This change to the use of YCSB better models a use case where new groups of users are likely to access either just their own entries, or entries within their own subgroups, rather than all users showing the same interest in a single global collection of keys. If an application finds every user having the same likelihood of wanting to modify a single global key, that application has no real hope of getting horizontal scaling. Finally, we used read/modify/write (also known as "Compare And Set") style updates during the mixed phase. This uses versioned operations to make sure that no updates are lost. This mode of operation provides better application behavior than the way we have typically run YCSB in the past, and is only practical at scale because we eliminated the shared key collision hotspots.It is also a more realistic testing scenario. To reiterate, all updates used a simple majority replica ack policy making them durable. Scalability Results In the table below, the "KVS Size" column is the number of records with the number of shards and the replication factor. Hence, the first row indicates 400m total records in the NoSQL Database (KV Store), 2 shards, and a replication factor of 3. The "Clients" column indicates the number of YCSB client processes. "Threads" is the number of threads per process with the total number of threads. Hence, 90 threads per YCSB process for a total of 360 threads. The client processes were distributed across 10 client machines. Shards KVS Size Clients Mixed (records) Threads OverallThroughput(ops/sec) Read Latencyav/95%/99%(ms) Write Latencyav/95%/99%(ms) 2 400m(2x3) 4 90(360) 302,152 0.76/1/3 3.08/8/35 4 800m(4x3) 8 90(720) 558,569 0.79/1/4 3.82/16/45 8 1600m(8x3) 16 90(1440) 1,028,868 0.85/2/5 4.29/21/51 10 2000m(10x3) 20 90(1800) 1,244,550 0.88/2/6 4.47/23/53

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• Namespaces are obsolete

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  To those of us who have been around for a while, namespaces have been part of the landscape. One could even say that they have been defining the large-scale features of the landscape in question. However, something happened fairly recently that I think makes this venerable structure obsolete. Before I explain this development and why it’s a superior concept to namespaces, let me recapitulate what namespaces are and why they’ve been so good to us over the years… Namespaces are used for a few different things: Scope: a namespace delimits the portion of code where a name (for a class, sub-namespace, etc.) has the specified meaning. Namespaces are usually the highest-level scoping structures in a software package. Collision prevention: name collisions are a universal problem. Some systems, such as jQuery, wave it away, but the problem remains. Namespaces provide a reasonable approach to global uniqueness (and in some implementations such as XML, enforce it). In .NET, there are ways to relocate a namespace to avoid those rare collision cases. Hierarchy: programmers like neat little boxes, and especially boxes within boxes within boxes. For some reason. Regular human beings on the other hand, tend to think linearly, which is why the Windows explorer for example has tried in a few different ways to flatten the file system hierarchy for the user. 1 is clearly useful because we need to protect our code from bleeding effects from the rest of the application (and vice versa). A language with only global constructs may be what some of us started programming on, but it’s not desirable in any way today. 2 may not be always reasonably worth the trouble (jQuery is doing fine with its global plug-in namespace), but we still need it in many cases. One should note however that globally unique names are not the only possible implementation. In fact, they are a rather extreme solution. What we really care about is collision prevention within our application. What happens outside is irrelevant. 3 is, more than anything, an aesthetical choice. A common convention has been to encode the whole pedigree of the code into the namespace. Come to think about it, we never think we need to import “Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Agent” and that would be very hard to remember. What we want to do is bring nHibernate into our app. And this is precisely what you’ll do with modern package managers and module loaders. I want to take the specific example of RequireJS, which is commonly used with Node. Here is how you import a module with RequireJS: var http = require("http"); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This is of course importing a HTTP stack module into the code. There is no noise here. Let’s break this down. Scope (1) is provided by the one scoping mechanism in JavaScript: the closure surrounding the module’s code. Whatever scoping mechanism is provided by the language would be fine here. Collision prevention (2) is very elegantly handled. Whereas relocating is an afterthought, and an exceptional measure with namespaces, it is here on the frontline. You always relocate, using an extremely familiar pattern: variable assignment. We are very much used to managing our local variable names and any possible collision will get solved very easily by picking a different name. Wait a minute, I hear some of you say. This is only taking care of collisions on the client-side, on the left of that assignment. What if I have two libraries with the name “http”? Well, You can better qualify the path to the module, which is what the require parameter really is. As for hierarchical organization, you don’t really want that, do you? RequireJS’ module pattern does elegantly cover the bases that namespaces used to cover, but it also promotes additional good practices. First, it promotes usage of self-contained, single responsibility units of code through the closure-based, stricter scoping mechanism. Namespaces are somewhat more porous, as using/import statements can be used bi-directionally, which leads us to my second point… Sane dependency graphs are easier to achieve and sustain with such a structure. With namespaces, it is easy to construct dependency cycles (that’s bad, mmkay?). With this pattern, the equivalent would be to build mega-components, which are an easier problem to spot than a decay into inter-dependent namespaces, for which you need specialized tools. I really like this pattern very much, and I would like to see more environments implement it. One could argue that dependency injection has some commonalities with this for example. What do you think? This is the half-baked result of some morning shower reflections, and I’d love to read your thoughts about it. What am I missing?

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• Trouble with AABB collision response and physics

  - by WCM

  I have been racking my brain trying to figure out a problem I am having with physics and basic AABB collision response. I am fairly close as the physics are mostly right. Gravity feels good and movement is solid. The issue I am running into is that when I land on the test block in my project, I can jump off of it most of the time. If I repeatedly jump in place, I will eventually get stuck one or two pixels below the surface of the test block. If I try to jump, I can become free of the other block, but it will happen again a few jumps later. I feel like I am missing something really obvious with this. I have two functions that support the detection and function to return a vector for the overlap of the two rectangle bounding boxes. I have a single update method that is processing the physics and collision for the entity. I feel like I am missing something very simple, like an ordering of the physics vs. collision response handling. Any thoughts or help can be appreciated. I apologize for the format of the code, tis prototype code mostly. The collision detection function: public static bool Collides(Rectangle source, Rectangle target) { if (source.Right < target.Left || source.Bottom < target.Top || source.Left > target.Right || source.Top > target.Bottom) { return false; } return true; } The overlap function: public static Vector2 GetMinimumTranslation(Rectangle source, Rectangle target) { Vector2 mtd = new Vector2(); Vector2 amin = source.Min(); Vector2 amax = source.Max(); Vector2 bmin = target.Min(); Vector2 bmax = target.Max(); float left = (bmin.X - amax.X); float right = (bmax.X - amin.X); float top = (bmin.Y - amax.Y); float bottom = (bmax.Y - amin.Y); if (left > 0 || right < 0) return Vector2.Zero; if (top > 0 || bottom < 0) return Vector2.Zero; if (Math.Abs(left) < right) mtd.X = left; else mtd.X = right; if (Math.Abs(top) < bottom) mtd.Y = top; else mtd.Y = bottom; // 0 the axis with the largest mtd value. if (Math.Abs(mtd.X) < Math.Abs(mtd.Y)) mtd.Y = 0; else mtd.X = 0; return mtd; } The update routine (gravity = 0.001f, jumpHeight = 0.35f, moveAmount = 0.15f): public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { Acceleration.Y = gravity; Position += new Vector2((float)(movement * moveAmount * gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds), (float)(Velocity.Y * gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds)); Velocity.Y += Acceleration.Y; Vector2 previousPosition = new Vector2((int)Position.X, (int)Position.Y); KeyboardState keyboard = Keyboard.GetState(); movement = 0; if (keyboard.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { movement -= 1; } if (keyboard.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) { movement += 1; } if (Position.Y + 16 > GameClass.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height) { Velocity.Y = 0; Position = new Vector2(Position.X, GameClass.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height - 16); IsOnSurface = true; } if (Collision.Collides(BoundingBox, GameClass.Instance.block.BoundingBox)) { Vector2 mtd = Collision.GetMinimumTranslation(BoundingBox, GameClass.Instance.block.BoundingBox); Position += mtd; Velocity.Y = 0; IsOnSurface = true; } if (keyboard.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space) && !previousKeyboard.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space)) { if (IsOnSurface) { Velocity.Y = -jumpHeight; IsOnSurface = false; } } previousKeyboard = keyboard; } This is also a full download to the project. https://www.box.com/s/3rkdtbso3xgfgc2asawy P.S. I know that I could do this with the XNA Platformer Starter Kit algo, but it has some deep flaws that I am going to try to live without. I'd rather go the route of collision response via an overlay function. Thanks for any and all insight!

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• The Apple iPad &ndash; I&rsquo;m gonna get it!

  - by Sahil Malik

  Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). Well, heck, here comes another non-techie blogpost. You know I’m a geek, so I love gadgets! I found it RATHER interesting to see all the negative news on the blogosphere about the iPad. The main bitch points are - No Multi tasking No Flash Just a bigger iPhone. So here’s the deal! My view is, the above 3 are EXACTLY what I had personally hoped for in the Apple iPad. Before the release, I had gone on the record saying - “If the Apple Tablet is able to run full fledged iTunes (so I can get rid of iTunes on my desktop, I don’t like iTunes on Windows), can browse the net, can read PDFs, and will be under $1000, I’ll buy it”. Well, so, the released iPad wasn’t exactly like my dream tablet. The biggest downer IMO was it’s inability to run full iTunes. But, really, in retrospect, I like the newly released iPad. And here is why. No Multi tasking and No Flash, means much better battery life. Frankly, I rarely multi task on my laptop/desktop .. yeah I know my OS does .. but ME – I don’t multi task, and I don’t think you do either!! As I type this blogpost, I have a few windows running behind the scenes, but they are simply waiting for me to get back to them. The only thing truly running and I am making use of, other than this blogost, is media player playing some music – which the iPad can do. Also, I am logged into IM/Email – which again, iPad can do via notifications. It does the limited multitasking I need, without chewing down on batteries. Smart thinking, precisely the reason I love the iPhone. I don’t want a bulky battery consuming machine. Lack of flash? Okay sure, I can’t see Hulu on my iPad. That’s some loss. I can see youtube. Also, per Adobe I can’t see some porn sites, which I don’t want to see on my iPad. But, Flash is heavy. Especially flash video. My dream is to see silverlight run on the iPhone and iPad. No flash = not such a big loss. Speaking of battery life – 10 hours is plenty. I haven’t been away from electricity for that long usually, so I’m okay with charging it up when it runs low. It’s really not such a big deal honestly. Finally, eBook functionality – wow! I went on the record saying, eBook readers are not for me, but seriously, the iPad is perfect for my eBook needs at least. And as far it being just a bigger iPhone? I’ve always wanted a bigger iPhone, precisely for the eBook reading experience. I love my iPhone, I love the apps on it. The only thing that sucks about the iPhone is battery life, but other than that, it is the best gadget I have ever bought! And something that runs on mobile chips, is that thin, and those newly written apps .. mail, calendar .. I am very very excited to get my iPad, which will be the 64gig 3G version. The biggest plus in an iPad ……… no contract on data. I am *hoping*, this means that I can buy a SIM card in Europe, and use the iPad here. That would be killer awesome! But hey, if I had to pick downers in the iPad, they would be - - I wish they had a 128G Version. Now that we have a good video viewing machine, I know I’d chew up space quickly.- Sync over WIFI, seriously Apple.  Both for iPhone and iPad.- 3 month wait!!- Existing iPhone users should get a discount on the iPad data plan. Comment on the article ....

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• Silverlight Reporting Application Part 3.5 - Prism Background and WCF RIA [Series Intermission]

  Taking a step back before I dive into the details and full-on coding fun, I wanted to once again respond to a comment on my last post to clear up some things in regards to how I'm setting up my project and some of the choices I've made. Aka, thanks Ben. :) Prism Project Setup For starters, I'm not the ideal use case for a Prism application. In most cases where you've got a one-man team, Prism can be overkill as it is more intended for large teams who are geographically dispersed or in applications that have a larger scale than my Recruiting application in which you'll greatly benefit from modularity, delayed loading of xaps, etc. What Prism offers, though, is a manner for handling UI, commands, and events with the idea that, through a modular approach in which no parts really need to know about one another, I can update this application bit by bit as hiring needs change or requirements differ between offices without having to worry that changing something in the Jobs module will break something in, say, the Scheduling module. All that being said, here's a look at how our project breakdown for Recruit (MVVM/Prism implementation) looks: This could be a little misleading though, as each of those modules is actually another project in the overall Recruit solution. As far as what the projects actually are, that looks a bit like this: Recruiting Solution Recruit (Shell up there) - Main Silverlight Application .Web - Default .Web application to host the Silverlight app Infrastructure - Silverlight Class Library Project Modules - Silverlight Class Library Projects Infrastructure &Modules The Infrastructure project is probably something you'll see to some degree in any composite application. In this application, it is going to contain custom commands (you'll see the joy of these in a post or two down the road), events, helper classes, and any custom classes I need to share between different modules. Think of this as a handy little crossroad between any parts of your application. Modules on the other hand are the bread and butter of this application. Besides the shell, which holds the UI skeleton, and the infrastructure, which holds all those shared goodies, the modules are self-contained bundles of functionality to handle different concerns. In my scenario, I need a way to look up and edit Jobs, Applicants, and Schedule interviews, a Notification module to handle telling the user when different things are happening (i.e., loading from database), and a Menu to control interaction and moving between different views. All modules are going to follow the following pattern: The module class will inherit from IModule and handle initialization and loading the correct view into the correct region, whereas the Views and ViewModels folders will contain paired Silverlight user controls and ViewModel class backings. WCF RIA Services Since we've got all the projects in a single solution, we did not have to go the route of creating a WCR RIA Services Class Library. Every module has it's WCF RIA link back to the main .Web project, so the single Linq-2-SQL (yes, I said Linq-2-SQL, but I'll soon be switching to OpenAccess due to the new visual designer) context I'm using there works nicely with the scope of my project. If I were going for completely separating this project out and doing different, dynamically loaded elements, I'd probably go for the separate class library. Hope that clears that up. In the future though, I will be using that in a project that I've got in the "when I've got enough time to work on this" pipeline, so we'll get into that eventually- and hopefully when WCF RIA is in full release! Why Not use Silverlight Navigation/Business Template? The short answer- I'm a creature of habit, and having used Silverlight for a few years now, I'm used to doing lots of things manually. :) Plus, starting with a blank slate of a project I'm able to set up things exactly as I want them to be. In this case, rather than the navigation frame we would see in one of the templates, the MainRegion/ContentControl is working as our main navigation window. In many cases I will use theSilverlight navigation template to start things off, however in this case I did not need those features so I opted out of using that. Next time when I actually hit post #4, we're going to get into the modules and starting to get functionality into this application. Next week is also release week for the Q1 2010 release, so be sure to check out our annualWebinar Week (I might be biased, but Wednesday is my favorite out of the group). Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Webcor Builders Coordinates Construction Schedules and Mitigates Potential Delays More Efficiently with Integrated Project Management

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} With more than 40 years of commercial construction experience, Webcor Builders is a leading builder of distinguished, high-profile projects, including high-rise condominiums and hotels, laboratories, healthcare centers, and public works projects. Webcor is also known for its award-winning concrete, interior construction, historic restoration, and seismic renovation work. The company has completed more than 50 million square feet of projects to date. Considering the variety and complexity of the construction projects Webcor undertakes, an integrated project management solution is critical to ensuring optimal efficiency and completing client projects on time and on budget. The company previously used a number of scheduling systems for its various building projects. These packages provided different levels of schedule detail and required schedulers, engineers, and other employees to learn multiple systems. From an IT cost and complexity perspective, the company had to manage multiple scheduling systems and pay for multiple sets of licenses. The company looked to standardize on an enterprise project management system, and selected Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management. Webcor uses the solution’s advanced capabilities to schedule complex projects, analyze delays, model and propose multiple scenarios to demonstrate and mitigate delays and cost overruns, and process that information efficiently to deliver the scheduling precision that public and private projects require. In fact, the solution was instrumental in helping the company’s expansion into public sector projects during the recent economic downturn, and with Primavera P6 in place, it can deliver the precise schedule reporting required for large public projects. With Primavera P6 in place, the company could deliver the precise scheduling and milestone reporting capabilities required for large public projects. The solution is in managing the high-profile University of California – Berkeley Memorial Stadium project. Webcor was hired as construction manager and general contractor for the stadium renovation project, which is a fast-paced project located near the seismically active Hayward Fault Zone. Due to the University of California’s football schedule, meeting the Universities deadline for the coming season placed Webcor in a situation where risk awareness and early warnings of issues would be paramount. Webcor and the extended project team needed a solution that could instantly analyze alternate scenarios to mitigate potential delays; Primavera would deliver those answers.The team would also need to enable multiple stakeholders to use an internet-based platform to access the schedule from various locations, and model complicated sequencing requirements where swift decisions would be made to keep the project on track. The schedule is an integral part of Webcor’s construction management process for the stadium project. Rather than providing the client with the industry-standard monthly update, Webcor updates the critical path method (CPM) schedule on a weekly basis. The project team also reviews the schedule and updates weekly to confirm that progress and forecasted performance are accurate. Hired by the University for their ability to deliver in high risk environments The Webcor team was hit recently with a design supplement that could have added up to 70 days to the project. Using Oracle Primavera P6 the team sprung into action analyzing multiple “what if” scenarios to review mitigation means and methods.  Determined to make sure the Bears could take the field in the coming season the project team nearly eliminated the impact with their creative analysis in working the schedule. The total time from the issuance of the final design supplement to an agreed mitigation response was less than one week; leveraging the Oracle Primavera solution Webcor was able to deliver superior customer value With the ability to efficiently manage projects and schedules, Webcor can ensure it completes its projects on time and on budget, as well as inform clients about what changes to plans will mean in terms of delays and additional costs. Read the complete customer case study at :  http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/customers/customersearch/webcor-builders-1-primavera-ss-1639886.html

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• A Patent for Workload Management Based on Service Level Objectives

  - by jsavit

  I'm very pleased to announce that after a tiny :-) wait of about 5 years, my patent application for a workload manager was finally approved. Background Many operating systems have a resource manager which lets you control machine resources. For example, Solaris provides controls for CPU with several options: shares for proportional CPU allocation. If you have twice as many shares as me, and we are competing for CPU, you'll get about twice as many CPU cycles), dedicated CPU allocation in which a number of CPUs are exclusively dedicated to an application's use. You can say that a zone or project "owns" 8 CPUs on a 32 CPU machine, for example. And, capped CPU in which you specify the upper bound, or cap, of how much CPU an application gets. For example, you can throttle an application to 0.125 of a CPU. (This isn't meant to be an exhaustive list of Solaris RM controls.) Workload management Useful as that is (and tragic that some other operating systems have little resource management and isolation, and frighten people into running only 1 app per OS instance - and wastefully size every server for the peak workload it might experience) that's not really workload management. With resource management one controls the resources, and hope that's enough to meet application service objectives. In fact, we hold resource distribution constant, see if that was good enough, and adjust resource distribution if that didn't meet service level objectives. Here's an example of what happens today: Let's try 30% dedicated CPU. Not enough? Let's try 80% Oh, that's too much, and we're achieving much better response time than the objective, but other workloads are starving. Let's back that off and try again. It's not the process I object to - it's that we to often do this manually. Worse, we sometimes identify and adjust the wrong resource and fiddle with that to no useful result. Back in my days as a customer managing large systems, one of my users would call me up to beg for a "CPU boost": Me: "it won't make any difference - there's plenty of spare CPU to be had, and your application is completely I/O bound." User: "Please do it anyway." Me: "oh, all right, but it won't do you any good." (I did, because he was a friend, but it didn't help.) Prior art There are some operating environments that take a stab about workload management (rather than resource management) but I find them lacking. I know of one that uses synthetic "service units" composed of the sum of CPU, I/O and memory allocations multiplied by weighting factors. A workload is set to make a target rate of service units consumed per second. But this seems to be missing a key point: what is the relationship between artificial 'service units' and actually meeting a throughput or response time objective? What if I get plenty of one of the components (so am getting enough service units), but not enough of the resource whose needed to remove the bottleneck? Actual workload management That's not really the answer either. What is needed is to specify a workload's service levels in terms of externally visible metrics that are meaningful to a business, such as response times or transactions per second, and have the workload manager figure out which resources are not being adequately provided, and then adjust it as needed. If an application is not meeting its service level objectives and the reason is that it's not getting enough CPU cycles, adjust its CPU resource accordingly. If the reason is that the application isn't getting enough RAM to keep its working set in memory, then adjust its RAM assignment appropriately so it stops swapping. Simple idea, but that's a task we keep dumping on system administrators. In other words - don't hold the number of CPU shares constant and watch the achievement of service level vary. Instead, hold the service level constant, and dynamically adjust the number of CPU shares (or amount of other resources like RAM or I/O bandwidth) in order to meet the objective. Instrumenting non-instrumented applications There's one little problem here: how do I measure application performance in a way relating to a service level. I don't want to do it based on internal resources like number of CPU seconds it received per minute - We need to make resource decisions based on externally visible and meaningful measures of performance, not synthetic items or internal resource counters. If I have a way of marking the beginning and end of a transaction, I can then measure whether or not the application is meeting an objective based on it. If I can observe the delay factors for an application, I can see which resource shortages are slowing an application enough to keep it from meeting its objectives. I can then adjust resource allocations to relieve those shortages. Fortunately, Solaris provides facilities for both marking application progress and determining what factors cause application latency. The Solaris DTrace facility let's me introspect on application behavior: in particular I can see events like "receive a web hit" and "respond to that web hit" so I can get transaction rate and response time. DTrace (and tools like prstat) let me see where latency is being added to an application, so I know which resource to adjust. Summary After a delay of a mere few years, I am the proud creator of a patent (advice to anyone interested in going through the process: don't hold your breath!). The fundamental idea is fairly simple: instead of holding resource constant and suffering variable levels of success meeting service level objectives, properly characterise the service level objective in meaningful terms, instrument the application to see if it's meeting the objective, and then have a workload manager change resource allocations to remove delays preventing service level attainment. I've done it by hand for a long time - I think that's what a computer should do for me.

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• Synergy - easy share of keyboard and mouse between multiple computers

  Did you ever have the urge to share one set of keyboard and mouse between multiple machines? If so, please read on... Using multiple machines Honestly, as a software craftsman it is my daily business to run multiple machines - either physical or virtual - to be able to solve my customers' requirements. Recent hardware equipment allows this very easily. For laptops it's a no-brainer to attach a second or even a third screen in order to extend your native display. This works quite handy and in my case I used to attached two additional screens - one via HD15 connector, the other via HDMI. But... as it's a laptop and therefore a mobile unit there are slight restrictions. Detaching and re-attaching all cables when changing locations is one of them but hardware limitations, too. After all, it's a laptop and not a workstation. I guess, that anyone working in IT (or ICT) has more than one machine at their workplace or their home office and at least I find it quite annoying to have multiple sets of keyboard and mouse conquering my remaining space on my desk. Despite the ugly looks of all those cables and whatsoever 'chaos of distraction' I prefer a more clean solution and working environment. This allows me to actually focus on my work and tasks to do rather than to worry about choosing the right combination of keyboard/mouse. My current workplace is a patch work of various pieces of hardware (approx. 2-3 years): DIY desktop on Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit, Core2 Duo (E7400, 2.8GHz), 4GB RAM, 2x 250GB HDD, nVidia GPU 512MB Dell Inspiron 1525 on Windows 8 64-bit, 4GB RAM, 200GB HDD HP Compaq 6720s on Windows Vista 32-bit, Core2 Duo (T5670, 1.8GHz), 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD Mac mini on Mac OS X 10.7, Core i5 (2.3 GHz), 2GB RAM, 500GB HDD I know... Not the latest and greatest but a decent combination to work with. New system(s) is/are already on the shopping list but I live in the 'wrong' country to buy computer hardware. So, the next trip abroad will provide me with some new stuff. Using multiple operating systems The list of hardware above already names different operating systems, and actually I have only one preference: Linux. But still my job as a software craftsman for Visual FoxPro and .NET development requires other OSes, too. Not a big deal, it's just like this. Additionally to those physical machines, there are a bunch of virtual machines around. Most of them running either Windows XP or Windows 7. Since years I have the practice that each development for one customer is isolated into its own virtual machine and environment. This keeps it clean and version-safe. But as you can easily imagine with that setup there are a couple of constraints referring to keyboard and mouse. Usually, those systems require their own pieces of hardware attached. As stated, I don't like clutter on my desk's surface, so a cross-platform solution has to come in here. In the past, I tried it with various applications, hardware or network protocols like X11, RDP, NX, TeamViewer, RAdmin, KVM switch, etc. but the problem in this case is that they either allow you to remotely connect to the other system or exclusively 'bind' your peripherals to the active system. Not optimal after all. Synergy to the rescue Quote from their website: "Synergy lets you easily share your mouse and keyboard between multiple computers on your desk, and it's Free and Open Source. Just move your mouse off the edge of one computer's screen on to another. You can even share all of your clipboards. All you need is a network connection. Synergy is cross-platform (works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux)." Yep, that's it! All I need for my setup here... Actually, I couldn't believe it myself that I didn't stumble over synergy earlier but 'Get over it' and there we go. And despite the fact that it is Open Source, no, it's also for free. Donations for the developers are very welcome and recently they introduced Synergy Premium. A possibility to buy so-called premium votes that can be used to put more weight / importance on specific issues or bugs that you would like the developers to look into. Installation and configuration Simply download the installation packages for your systems of choice, run the installer and enter some minor information about your network setup. I chose my desktop machine for the role of the Synergy server and configured my screen setup as follows: The screen setup allows you currently to build or connect up to 15 machines. The number of screens can be higher as those machine might have multiple screens physically attached. Synergy takes this into the overall calculations and simply works as expected. I tried it for fun with a second monitor each connected to both laptops to have a total number of 6 active screens. No flaws after all - stunning! All the other machines are configured as clients like so: Side note: The screenshot was taken on Windows 8 and pasted via clipboard into Gimp running on Ubuntu. Resume Synergy is now definitely in my box of tools for my daily work, and amongst the first pieces of software I install after the operating system. It just simplifies my life and cleans my desk. Never again without Synergy!Now, only waiting for an Android version to integrate my Galaxy Tab 10.1, too. ;-) Please, check out that superb product and enjoy sharing one keyboard, one mouse and one clipboard between your various machines and operating systems.

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• Proxied calls not working as expected

  - by AndyH

  I have been modifying an application to have a cleaner client/server split to allow for load splitting and resource sharing etc. Everything is written to an interface so it was easy to add a remoting layer to the interface using a proxy. Everything worked fine. The next phase was to add a caching layer to the interface and again this worked fine and speed was improved but not as much as I would have expected. On inspection it became very clear what was going on. I feel sure that this behavior has been seen many times before and there is probably a design pattern to solve the problem but it eludes me and I'm not even sure how to describe it. It is easiest explained with an example. Let's imagine the interface is interface IMyCode { List<IThing> getLots( List<String> ); IThing getOne( String id ); } The getLots() method calls getOne() and fills up the list before returning. The interface is implemented at the client which is proxied to a remoting client which then calls the remoting server which in turn calls the implementation at the server. At the client and the server layers there is also a cache. So we have :- Client interface | Client cache | Remote client | Remote server | Server cache | Server interface If we call getOne("A") at the client interface, the call is passed to the client cache which faults. This then calls the remote client which passes the call to the remote server. This then calls the server cache which also faults and so the call is eventually passed to the server interface which actually gets the IThing. In turn the server cache is filled and finally the client cache also. If getOne("A") is again called at the client interface the client cache has the data and it gets returned immediately. If a second client called getOne("B") it would fill the server cache with "B" as well as it's own client cache. Then, when the first client calls getOne("B") the client cache faults but the server cache has the data. This is all as one would expect and works well. Now lets call getLots( [ "C", "D" ] ). This works as you would expect by calling getOne() twice but there is a subtlety here. The call to getLots() cannot directly make use of the cache. Therefore the sequence is to call the client interface which in turn calls the remote client, then the remote server and eventually the server interface. This then calls getOne() to fill the list before returning. The problem is that the getOne() calls are being satisfied at the server when ideally they should be satisfied at the client. If you imagine that the client/server link is really slow then it becomes clear why the client call is more efficient than the server call once the client cache has the data. This example is contrived to illustrate the point. The more general problem is that you cannot just keep adding proxied layers to an interface and expect it to work as you would imagine. As soon as the call goes 'through' the proxy any subsequent calls are on the proxied side rather than 'self' side. Have I failed to learn or not learned something correctly? All this is implemented in Java and I haven't used EJBs. It seems that the example may be confusing. The problem is nothing to do with cache efficiencies. It is more to do with an illusion created by the use of proxies or AOP techniques in general. When you have an object whose class implements an interface there is an assumption that a call on that object might make further calls on that same object. For example, public String getInternalString() { return InetAddress.getLocalHost().toString(); } public String getString() { return getInternalString(); } If you get an object and call getString() the result depends where the code is running. If you add a remoting proxy to the class then the result could be different for calls to getString() and getInternalString() on the same object. This is because the initial call gets 'deproxied' before the actual method is called. I find this not only confusing but I wonder how I can control this behavior especially as the use of the proxy may be by a third party. The concept is fine but the practice is certainly not what I expected. Have I missed the point somewhere?

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• Speakers, Please Check Your Time

  - by AjarnMark

  Woodrow Wilson was once asked how long it would take him to prepare for a 10 minute speech. He replied "Two weeks". He was then asked how long it would take for a 1 hour speech. "One week", he replied. 2 hour speech? "I'm ready right now," he replied.  Whether that is a true story or an urban legend, I don’t really know, but either way, it is a poignant reminder for all speakers, and particularly apropos this week leading up to the PASS Community Summit. (Cross-posted to the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter blog #PASSProfDev.) What’s the point of that story?  Simply this…if you have plenty of time to do your presentation, you don’t need to prepare much because it is easy to throw in more and more material to stretch out to your allotted time.  But if you are on a tight time constraint, then it will take significant preparation to distill your talk down to only the essential points. I have attended seven of the last eight North American Summit events, and every one of them has been fantastic.  The speakers are great, the material is timely and relevant, and the networking opportunities are awesome.  And every year, there is one little thing that just bugs me…speakers going over their allotted time.  Why does it bother me so?  Well, if you look at a typical schedule for a Summit, you’ll see that there are six or more sessions going on at the same time, and only 15 minutes to move from one to another.  If you’re trying to maximize your training dollar by attending something during every session time slot, and you don’t want to be the last guy trying to squeeze into the middle of the row, then those 15 minutes can be critical.  All the more so if you need to stop and use the bathroom or if you have to hike to the opposite end of the convention center.  It is really a bad position to find yourself having to choose between learning the last key points of Speaker A who is going over time, and getting over to Speaker B on time so you don’t miss her key opening remarks. And frankly, I think it is just rude.  Yes, the speakers are the function, after all they are bringing the content that the rest of us are paying to learn.  But it is also an honor to be given the opportunity to speak at a conference like this, and no one speaker is so important that the conference would be a disaster without him.  Speakers know when they submit their abstract, long before the conference, how much time they will have.  It has been the same pattern at the Summit for at least the last eight years.  Program Sessions are 75 minutes long.  Some speakers who have a good track record, and meet other qualifying criteria, are extended an invitation to present a Spotlight Session which is 90 minutes (a 20% increase).  So there really is no excuse.  It’s not like you were promised a 2-hour segment and then discovered when you got here that it was only 75 minutes.  In fact, it’s not like PASS advertised 90-minute sessions for everyone and then a select few were cut back to only 75.  As a speaker, you know well before you get here which type of session you are doing and how long it is, so as a professional, you should plan accordingly. Now you might think that this only happens to rookies, but I’ll tell you that some of the worst offenders are big-name veterans who draw huge attendance numbers for their sessions.  Some attendees blow this off as, “Hey, it’s so-and-so, and I’d stay here for hours and listen to him/her talk.”  To which I would reply, “Then they should have submitted for a pre- or post-conference day-long seminar instead, but don’t try to squeeze your day-long talk into a 90-minute session.”  Now I don’t really believe that these speakers are being malicious or just selfishly trying to extend their time in the spotlight.  I think that most of them are merely being undisciplined and did not trim their presentation sufficiently, or allowed themselves to get off-track (often in a generous attempt to help someone in the audience with a question or problem that really should have been noted for further discussion after the session). So here is my recommendation…my plea, even.  TRIM THE FAT!  Now.  Before it’s too late.  Before you even get on the airplane, take a long, hard look at your presentation and eliminate some of the points that you originally thought you had to make, but in reality are not truly crucial to your main topic.  Delete a few slides.  Test your demos and have them already scripted rather than typing them during your talk.  It is better to cut out too much and end up with plenty of time at the end for Questions & Answers.  And you can always keep some notes on the stuff that you cut out so that you could fill it back in at the end as bonus material if you really do end up with a whole bunch of time on your hands.  But I don’t think you will.  And if you do, that will look even better to the audience as it will look like you’re giving them something extra that not every audience gets.  And they will thank you for that.

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• Time to Get Started with Oracle Data Integrator 12c!

  - by Sandrine Riley

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} It is time to get started with Oracle Data Integrator 12c! We would like to highlight for you a great place to begin your journey with ODI.  Here you will find the Getting Started section for ODI, which provides a few options. v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Step 1 – Start by downloading the Getting Started (PDF). The document provides general background information and detailed examples to help you learn how to use Oracle Data Integrator. This document guides you through a first project with Oracle Data Integrator 12c, and the instructions in this document are required for using the Getting Started Demonstration Environment. If you would like to run the Getting Started Demonstration Environment on your system go to Step 2 A. If you would like to run the Getting Started Demonstration Environment installed and pre-configured in a Virtual Image, go to Step 2 B. Step 2 - A-   A -  If you would like to run the Getting Started Demo Environment on your system, you will want to then download the Demo Environment for Getting Started (ZIP) archive containing ODI metadata, configuration scripts and sample data. B-   B -  Alternatively, a pre-configured virtual machine is available with the Getting Started installation and configuration. The Virtual Machine platform uses Oracle Virtual Box technology, and use of this configuration would necessitate the download/installation of Virtual Box and the Getting Started virtual machine. If you prefer this route and would rather run the Getting Started Demonstration Environment installed and preconfigured in a Virtual Machine, please download the ODI 12c Getting Started Virtual Machine. Step 3 – In continuation with the Getting Started Demonstration Environment and the Getting Started Guide, you will now be able to run through a first project with Oracle Data Integrator. Now that you have successfully done the exercises above, you may want to play on your own, and develop with Oracle Data Integrator on your environment...  here you can download a full version of Oracle Data Integrator 12c.  Enjoy, and happy developing! Learn more about Oracle Data Integrator; including FAQ, the Oracle by Example Series, Sample Code, and White Papers. Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

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• Reading the tea leaves from Windows Azure support

  - by jamiet

  A few idle thoughts… Three months ago I had an issue regarding Windows Azure where I was unable to login to the management portal. At the time I contacted Azure support, the issue was soon resolved and I thought no more about it. Until today that is when I received an email from Azure support providing a detailed analysis of the root cause, the fix and moreover precise details about when and where things occurred. The email itself is interesting and I have included the entirety of it below. A few things were interesting to me: The level of detail and the diligence in investigating and reporting the issue I found really rather impressive. They even outline the number of users that were affected (127 in case you can’t be bothered reading). Compare this to the quite pathetic support that another division within Microsoft, Skype, provided to Greg Low recently: Skype support and dead parrot sketches   This line: “Windows Azure performed a planned change from using the Microsoft account service (formerly Windows Live ID) to the Azure Active Directory (AAD) as its primary authentication mechanism on August 24th. This change was made to enable future innovation in the area of authentication – particularly for organizationally owned identities, identity federation, stronger authentication methods and compliance certification. ” I also found to be particularly interesting. I have long thought that one of the reasons Microsoft has proved to be such a money-making machine in the enterprise is because they provide the infrastructure and then upsell on top of that – and nothing is more infrastructural than Active Directory. It has struck me of late that they are trying to make the same play of late in the cloud by tying all their services into Azure Active Directory and here we see a clear indication of that by making AAD the authentication mechanism for anyone using Windows Azure. I get the feeling that we’re going to hear much much more about AAD in the future; isn’t it about time we could log on to SQL Azure Windows Azure SQL Database without resorting to SQL authentication, for example? And why do Microsoft have two identity providers – Microsoft Account (aka Windows Live ID) and AAD – isn’t it about time those things were combined? As I said, just some idle thoughts. Below is the transcript of the email if you are interested. @Jamiet  This is regarding the support request <redacted> where in you were not able to login into the windows azure management portal with live id. We are providing you with the summary, root cause analysis and information about permanent fix: Incident Title: You were unable to access Windows Azure Portal after Microsoft Account to Azure Active Directory account Migration. Service Impacted: Management Portal Incident Start Date and Time: 8/24/2012 4:30:00 PM Date and Time Service was Restored: 10/17/2012 12:00:00 AM Summary: Windows Azure performed a planned change from using the Microsoft account service (formerly Windows Live ID) to the Azure Active Directory (AAD) as its primary authentication mechanism on August 24th.   This change was made to enable future innovation in the area of authentication – particularly for organizationally owned identities, identity federation, stronger authentication methods and compliance certification.   While this migration was largely transparent to Windows Azure users, a small number of users whose sign-in names were part of a Windows Live Custom Domain were unable to login.   This incompatibility was not discovered during the Quality Assurance testing phase prior to the migration. Customer Impact: Customers whose sign-in names were part of a Windows Live Custom Domain were unable to sign-in the Management Portal after ~4:00 p.m. PST on August 24th, 2012.   We determined that the issue did impact at least 127 users in 98 of these Windows Live Custom Domains and had a maximum potential impact of 1,110 users in total. Root Cause: The root cause of the issue was an incompatibility in the AAD authentication service to handle logins from Microsoft accounts whose sign-in names were part of a Windows Live Custom Domains.  This issue was not discovered during the Quality Assurance testing phase prior to the migration from Microsoft Account (MSA) to AAD. Mitigations: The issue was mitigated for the majority of affected users by 8:20 a.m. PST on August 25th, 2012 by running some internal scripts to correct many known Windows Live Custom Domains.   The remaining affected domains fell into two categories: Windows Live Custom Domains that were not corrected by 8/25/2012. An additional 48 Windows Live Custom Domains were fixed in the weeks following the incident within 2 business days after the AAD team received an escalation from product support regarding those accounts. Windows Live Custom domains that were also provisioned in Office365. Some of the affected Windows Live Custom Domains had already been provisioned in AAD because their owners signed up for Office365 which is a service that also uses AAD.   In these cases the Azure customers had to work around the issue by renaming their Microsoft Account or using a different Microsoft Account to administer their Azure subscription. Permanent Fix: The Azure Active Directory team permanently fixed the issue for all customers on 10/17/2012 in an upgraded release of the AAD service.

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• Oracle Cloud Applications: The Right Ingredients Baked In

  - by yaldahhakim

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Oracle Cloud Applications: The Right Ingredients Baked In Eggs, flour, milk, and sugar. The magic happens when you mix these ingredients together. The same goes for the hottest technologies fast changing how IT impacts our organizations today: cloud, social, mobile, and big data. By themselves they’re pretty good; combining them with a great recipe is what unlocks real transformation power. Choosing the right cloud can be very similar to choosing the right cake. First consider comparing the core ingredients that go into baking a cake and the core design principles in building a cloud-based application. For instance, if flour is the base ingredient of a cake, then rich functionality that spans complete business processes is the base of an enterprise-grade cloud. Cloud computing is more than just consuming an "application as service", and having someone else manage it for you. Rather, the value of cloud is about making your business more agile in the marketplace, and shortening the time it takes to deliver and adopt new innovation. It’s also about improving not only the efficiency at which we communicate but the actual quality of the information shared as well. Data from different systems, like ingredients in a cake, must also be blended together effectively and evaluated through a consolidated lens. When this doesn’t happen, for instance when data in your sales cloud doesn't seamlessly connect with your order management and other “back office” applications, the speed and quality of information can decrease drastically. It’s like mixing ingredients in a strainer with a straw – you just can’t bring it all together without losing something. Mixing ingredients is similar to bringing clouds together, and co-existing cloud applications with traditional on premise applications. This is where a shared services  platform built on open standards and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is critical. It’s essentially a cloud recipe that calls for not only great ingredients, but also ingredients you can get locally or most likely already have in your kitchen (or IT shop.) Open standards is the best way to deliver a cost effective, durable application integration strategy – regardless of where your apps are deployed. It’s also the best way to build your own cloud applications, or extend the ones you consume from a third party. Just like using standard ingredients and tools you already have in your kitchen, a standards based cloud enables your IT resources to ensure a cloud works easily with other systems. Your IT staff can also make changes using tools they are already familiar with. Or even more ideal, enable business users to actually tailor their experience without having to call upon IT for help at all. This frees IT resources to focus more on developing new innovative services for the organization vs. run and maintain. Carrying the cake analogy forward, you need to add all the ingredients in before you bake it. The same is true with a modern cloud. To harness the full power of cloud, you can’t leave out some of the most important ingredients and just layer them on top later. This is what a lot of our niche competitors have done when it comes to social, mobile, big data and analytics, and other key technologies impacting the way we do business. The transformational power of these technology trends comes from having a strategy from the get-go that combines them into a winning recipe, and delivers them in a unified way. In looking at ways Oracle’s cloud is different from other clouds – not only is breadth of functionality rich across functional pillars like CRM, HCM, ERP, etc. but it embeds social, mobile, and rich intelligence capabilities where they make the most sense across business processes. This strategy enables the Oracle Cloud to uniquely deliver on all three of these dimensions to help our customers unlock the full power of these transformational technologies.

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• Developing Schema Compare for Oracle (Part 6): 9i Query Performance

  - by Simon Cooper

  All throughout the EAP and beta versions of Schema Compare for Oracle, our main request was support for Oracle 9i. After releasing version 1.0 with support for 10g and 11g, our next step was then to get version 1.1 of SCfO out with support for 9i. However, there were some significant problems that we had to overcome first. This post will concentrate on query execution time. When we first tested SCfO on a 9i server, after accounting for various changes to the data dictionary, we found that database registration was taking a long time. And I mean a looooooong time. The same database that on 10g or 11g would take a couple of minutes to register would be taking upwards of 30 mins on 9i. Obviously, this is not ideal, so a poke around the query execution plans was required. As an example, let's take the table population query - the one that reads ALL_TABLES and joins it with a few other dictionary views to get us back our list of tables. On 10g, this query takes 5.6 seconds. On 9i, it takes 89.47 seconds. The difference in execution plan is even more dramatic - here's the (edited) execution plan on 10g: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 108K| 939 || 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 108K| 939 || 2 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 108K| 938 ||* 3 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 103K| 762 || 4 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 2058 | 3 ||* 20 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 73472 | 759 || 21 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 2097 | 3 ||* 34 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 39920 | 755 || 35 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 7 || 58 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 39104 | 748 || 59 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 6704 | 668 || 89 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2025 | 5 || 106 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 277 | 11 |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And the same query on 9i: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 16P| 55G|| 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 16P| 55G|| 2 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 16P| 862M|| 3 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 5251G| 992K|| 4 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 4243M| 2578 || 5 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 2669K| 1440 ||* 6 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 398K| 302 || 7 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 342K| 276 || 29 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 20 ||* 50 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2043 | ||* 66 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 1777K| ||* 80 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 1744K| ||* 96 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 852K| |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have a look at the cost column. 10g's overall query cost is 939, and 9i is 55,000,000,000 (or more precisely, 55,496,472,769). It's also having to process far more data. What on earth could be causing this huge difference in query cost? After trawling through the '10g New Features' documentation, we found item 1.9.2.21. Before 10g, Oracle advised that you do not collect statistics on data dictionary objects. From 10g, it advised that you do collect statistics on the data dictionary; for our queries, Oracle therefore knows what sort of data is in the dictionary tables, and so can generate an efficient execution plan. On 9i, no statistics are present on the system tables, so Oracle has to use the Rule Based Optimizer, which turns most LEFT JOINs into nested loops. If we force 9i to use hash joins, like 10g, we get a much better plan: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 7587K| 3704 || 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 7587K| 3704 ||* 2 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 7587K| 822 ||* 3 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 5262K| 616 ||* 4 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 2980K| 465 ||* 5 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 710K| 432 ||* 6 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 398K| 302 || 7 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 342K| 276 || 29 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 20 || 50 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 852K| 104 || 78 | VIEW | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2043 | 14 || 93 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 1744K| 31 || 106 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 1777K| 28 |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's much more like it. This drops the execution time down to 24 seconds. Not as good as 10g, but still an improvement. There are still several problems with this, however. 10g introduced a new join method - a right outer hash join (used in the first execution plan). The 9i query optimizer doesn't have this option available, so forcing a hash join means it has to hash the ALL_TABLES table, and furthermore re-hash it for every hash join in the execution plan; this could be thousands and thousands of rows. And although forcing hash joins somewhat alleviates this problem on our test systems, there's no guarantee that this will improve the execution time on customers' systems; it may even increase the time it takes (say, if all their tables are partitioned, or they've got a lot of materialized views). Ideally, we would want a solution that provides a speedup whatever the input. To try and get some ideas, we asked some oracle performance specialists to see if they had any ideas or tips. Their recommendation was to add a hidden hook into the product that allowed users to specify their own query hints, or even rewrite the queries entirely. However, we would prefer not to take that approach; as well as a lot of new infrastructure & a rewrite of the population code, it would have meant that any users of 9i would have to spend some time optimizing it to get it working on their system before they could use the product. Another approach was needed. All our population queries have a very specific pattern - a base table provides most of the information we need (ALL_TABLES for tables, or ALL_TAB_COLS for columns) and we do a left join to extra subsidiary tables that fill in gaps (for instance, ALL_PART_TABLES for partition information). All the left joins use the same set of columns to join on (typically the object owner & name), so we could re-use the hash information for each join, rather than re-hashing the same columns for every join. To allow us to do this, along with various other performance improvements that could be done for the specific query pattern we were using, we read all the tables individually and do a hash join on the client. Fortunately, this 'pure' algorithmic problem is the kind that can be very well optimized for expected real-world situations; as well as storing row data we're not using in the hash key on disk, we use very specific memory-efficient data structures to store all the information we need. This allows us to achieve a database population time that is as fast as on 10g, and even (in some situations) slightly faster, and a memory overhead of roughly 150 bytes per row of data in the result set (for schemas with 10,000 tables in that means an extra 1.4MB memory being used during population). Next: fun with the 9i dictionary views.

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• Why won't USB 3.0 external hard drive run at USB 3.0 speeds?

  - by jgottula

  I recently purchased a PCI Express x1 USB 3.0 controller card (containing the NEC USB 3.0 controller) with the intent of using a USB 3.0 external hard drive with my Linux box. I installed the card in an empty PCIe slot on my motherboard, connected the card to a power cable, strung a USB 3.0 cable between one of the new ports and my external HDD, and connected the HDD to a wall socket for power. Booting the system, the drive works 100% as intended, with the one exception of throughput: rather than using SuperSpeed 4.8 Gbps connectivity, it seems to be falling back to High Speed 480 Mbps USB 2.0-style throughput. Disk Utility shows it as a 480 Mbps device, and running a couple Disk Utility and dd benchmarks confirms that the drive fails to exceed ~40 MB/s (the approximate limit of USB 2.0), despite it being an SSD capable of far more than that. When I connect my USB 3.0 HDD, dmesg shows this: [ 3923.280018] usb 3-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6 where I would expect to find this: [ 3923.280018] usb 3-2: new SuperSpeed USB device using xhci_hcd and address 6 My system was running on kernel 2.6.35-25-generic at the time. Then, I stumbled upon this forum thread by an individual who found that a bug, which was present in kernels prior to 2.6.37-rc5, could be the culprit for this type of problem. Consequently, I installed the 2.6.37-generic mainline Ubuntu kernel to determine if the problem would go away. It didn't, so I tried 2.6.38-rc3-generic, and even the 2.6.38 nightly from 2010.02.01, to no avail. In short, I'm trying to determine why, with USB 3.0 support in the kernel, my USB 3.0 drive fails to run at full SuperSpeed throughput. See the comments under this question for additional details. Output that might be relevant to the problem (when booting from 2.6.38-rc3): Relevant lines from dmesg: [ 19.589491] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 [ 19.589512] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 19.589516] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: xHCI Host Controller [ 19.589623] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 12 [ 19.650492] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: irq 17, io mem 0xf8100000 [ 19.650556] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: irq 47 for MSI/MSI-X [ 19.650560] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: irq 48 for MSI/MSI-X [ 19.650563] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: irq 49 for MSI/MSI-X [ 19.653946] xHCI xhci_add_endpoint called for root hub [ 19.653948] xHCI xhci_check_bandwidth called for root hub Relevant section of sudo lspci -v: 03:00.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 30) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17 Memory at f8100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [70] MSI: Enable- Count=1/8 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [90] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=8 Masked- Capabilities: [a0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting Capabilities: [140] Device Serial Number ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff Capabilities: [150] #18 Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd Kernel modules: xhci-hcd Relevant section of sudo lsusb -v: Bus 012 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 3.00 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 3 bMaxPacketSize0 9 idVendor 0x1d6b Linux Foundation idProduct 0x0003 3.0 root hub bcdDevice 2.06 iManufacturer 3 Linux 2.6.38-020638rc3-generic xhci_hcd iProduct 2 xHCI Host Controller iSerial 1 0000:03:00.0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xe0 Self Powered Remote Wakeup MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0004 1x 4 bytes bInterval 12 Hub Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 41 nNbrPorts 4 wHubCharacteristic 0x0009 Per-port power switching Per-port overcurrent protection TT think time 8 FS bits bPwrOn2PwrGood 10 * 2 milli seconds bHubContrCurrent 0 milli Ampere DeviceRemovable 0x00 PortPwrCtrlMask 0xff Hub Port Status: Port 1: 0000.0100 power Port 2: 0000.0100 power Port 3: 0000.0100 power Port 4: 0000.0100 power Device Status: 0x0003 Self Powered Remote Wakeup Enabled Full, non-verbose lsusb: Bus 012 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 011 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 010 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 009 Device 003: ID 04d9:0702 Holtek Semiconductor, Inc. Bus 009 Device 002: ID 046d:c068 Logitech, Inc. G500 Laser Mouse Bus 009 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 006: ID 174c:5106 ASMedia Technology Inc. Bus 003 Device 004: ID 0bda:0151 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Mass Storage Device (Multicard Reader) Bus 003 Device 002: ID 058f:6366 Alcor Micro Corp. Multi Flash Reader Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 006: ID 1687:0163 Kingmax Digital Inc. Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 046d:081b Logitech, Inc. Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Full output: full dmesg full lspci full lsusb

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• Storing non-content data in Orchard

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  A CMS like Orchard is, by definition, designed to store content. What differentiates content from other kinds of data is rather subtle. The way I would describe it is by saying that if you would put each instance of a kind of data on its own web page, if it would make sense to add comments to it, or tags, or ratings, then it is content and you can store it in Orchard using all the convenient composition options that it offers. Otherwise, it probably isn't and you can store it using somewhat simpler means that I will now describe. In one of the modules I wrote, Vandelay.ThemePicker, there is some configuration data for the module. That data is not content by the definition I gave above. Let's look at how this data is stored and queried. The configuration data in question is a set of records, each of which has a number of properties: public class SettingsRecord { public virtual int Id { get; set;} public virtual string RuleType { get; set; } public virtual string Name { get; set; } public virtual string Criterion { get; set; } public virtual string Theme { get; set; } public virtual int Priority { get; set; } public virtual string Zone { get; set; } public virtual string Position { get; set; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Each property has to be virtual for nHibernate to handle it (it creates derived classed that are instrumented in all kinds of ways). We also have an Id property. The way these records will be stored in the database is described from a migration: public int Create() { SchemaBuilder.CreateTable("SettingsRecord", table => table .Column<int>("Id", column => column.PrimaryKey().Identity()) .Column<string>("RuleType", column => column.NotNull().WithDefault("")) .Column<string>("Name", column => column.NotNull().WithDefault("")) .Column<string>("Criterion", column => column.NotNull().WithDefault("")) .Column<string>("Theme", column => column.NotNull().WithDefault("")) .Column<int>("Priority", column => column.NotNull().WithDefault(10)) .Column<string>("Zone", column => column.NotNull().WithDefault("")) .Column<string>("Position", column => column.NotNull().WithDefault("")) ); return 1; } When we enable the feature, the migration will run, which will create the table in the database. Once we've done that, all we have to do in order to use the data is inject an IRepository<SettingsRecord>, which is what I'm doing from the set of helpers I put under the SettingsService class: private readonly IRepository<SettingsRecord> _repository; private readonly ISignals _signals; private readonly ICacheManager _cacheManager; public SettingsService( IRepository<SettingsRecord> repository, ISignals signals, ICacheManager cacheManager) { _repository = repository; _signals = signals; _cacheManager = cacheManager; } The repository has a Table property, which implements IQueryable<SettingsRecord> (enabling all kind of Linq queries) as well as methods such as Delete and Create. Here's for example how I'm getting all the records in the table: _repository.Table.ToList() And here's how I'm deleting a record: _repository.Delete(_repository.Get(r => r.Id == id)); And here's how I'm creating one: _repository.Create(new SettingsRecord { Name = name, RuleType = ruleType, Criterion = criterion, Theme = theme, Priority = priority, Zone = zone, Position = position }); In summary, you create a record class, a migration, and you're in business and can just manipulate the data through the repository that the framework is exposing. You even get ambient transactions from the work context.

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• Key Windows Phone Development Concepts

  - by Tim Murphy

  As I am doing more development in and out of the enterprise arena for Windows Phone I decide I would study for the 70-599 test.  I generally take certification tests as a way to force me to dig deeper into a technology.  Between the development and studying I decided it would be good to put a post together of key development features in Windows Phone 7 environment.  Contrary to popular belief the launch of Windows Phone 8 will not obsolete Windows Phone 7 development.  With the launch of 7.8 coming shortly and people who will remain on 7.X for the foreseeable future there are still consumers needing these apps so don’t throw out the baby with the bath water. PhoneApplicationService This is a class that every Windows Phone developer needs to become familiar with.  When it comes to application state this is your go to repository.  It also contains events that help with management of your application’s lifecycle.  You can access it like the following code sample. 1: PhoneApplicationService.Current.State["ValidUser"] = userResult; DeviceNetworkInformation This class allows you to determine the connectivity of the device and be notified when something changes with that connectivity.  If you are making web service calls you will want to check here before firing off. I have found that this class doesn’t actually work very well for determining if you have internet access.  You are better of using the following code where IsConnectedToInternet is an App level property. private void Application_Launching(object sender, LaunchingEventArgs e){ // Validate user access if (Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterface.NetworkInterfaceType != Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterfaceType.None) { IsConnectedToInternet = true; } else { IsConnectedToInternet = false; } NetworkChange.NetworkAddressChanged += new NetworkAddressChangedEventHandler(NetworkChange_NetworkAddressChanged);}void NetworkChange_NetworkAddressChanged(object sender, EventArgs e){ IsConnectedToInternet = (Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterface.NetworkInterfaceType != Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterfaceType.None);} Push Notification Push notification allows your application to receive notifications in a way that reduces the application’s power needs. This MSDN article is a good place to get the basics of push notification, but you can see the essential concept in the diagram below.  There are three types of push notification: toast, Tile and raw.  The first two work regardless of the state of the application where as raw messages are discarded if your application is not running.   Live Tiles Live tiles are one of the main differentiators of the Windows Phone platform.  They allow users to find information at a glance from their start screen without navigating into individual apps.  Knowing how to implement them can be a great boost to the attractiveness of your application. The simplest step-by-step explanation for creating live tiles is here. Local Database While your application really only has Isolated Storage as a data store there are some ways of giving you database functionality to develop against.  There are a number of open source ORM style solutions.  Probably the best and most native way I have found is to use LINQ to SQL.  It does take a significant amount of setup, but the ease of use once it is configured is worth the cost.  Rather than repeat the full concepts here I will point you to a post that I wrote previously. Tasks (Bing, Email) Leveraging built in features of the Windows Phone platform is an easy way to add functionality that would be expensive to develop on your own.  The classes that you need to make yourself familiar with are BingMapsDirectionsTask and EmailComposeTask.  This will allow your application to supply directions and give the user an email path to relay information to friends and associates. Event model Because of the ability for users to switch quickly to switch to other apps or the home screen is just one reason why knowing the Windows Phone event model is important.  You need to be able to save data so that if a user gets a phone call they can come back to exactly where they were in your application.  This means that you will need to handle such events as Launching, Activated, Deactivated and Closing at an application level.  You will probably also want to get familiar with the OnNavigatedTo and OnNavigatedFrom events at the page level.  These will give you an opportunity to save data as a user navigates through your app. Summary This is just a small portion of the concepts that you will use while building Windows Phone apps, but these are some of the most critical.  With the launch of Windows Phone 8 this list will probably expand.  Take the time to investigate these topics further and try them out in your apps. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 7,Windows Phone,WP7,Software Development,70-599

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• Common reasons for the &lsquo;Sys is undefined&rsquo; error in ASP.NET Ajax applications

    In this blog I will try to summarize the most common reasons for getting the famous 'Sys is undefined' error when running an Ajax enabled web site or application (there are almost one milion results on Google for that phrase). Where does it come from? In every Ajax web pages source you will see a code like this: <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager._initialize('ScriptManager1', document.getElementById('form1')); Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager.getInstance()._updateControls([], [], [], 90); //]]> </script>   This is the initialization script of the ScriptManager. So, if for some reason the Sys namespace is not available when the code executes you get the Sys is undefined error. Here are the most common reasons and solutions for that problem:   1. The error occurs when you have added a control from RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, but your application is not configured to use ASP.NET AJAX. For example, in VS 2005 you created a new Blank Site instead of a new Ajax-Enabled Web Site and the Sys is undefined message pops up. To fix it you need to follow the steps described at Configuring ASP.NET Ajax article (check the topic called Adding ASP.NET AJAX Configuration Elements to an Existing Web Site) or simply create the Ajax-Enabled Web Site. You can also check my other blog post on the matter: Visual Studio 2008: Where is the new ASP.NET Ajax-Enabled Web Site template?   2. Authentication - as the website denies access to all pages to unauthorized users, access to the Telerik.Web.UI.WebResource.axd handler is unauthorized (this is the default handler of RadScriptManager). This causes the handler to serve the content of the login page instead of the combined scripts, hence the error. To solve it - add a <location> section to the application configuration file to allow access to Telerik.Web.UI.WebResource.axd to all users, like: <configuration> ... <location path="Telerik.Web.UI.WebResource.axd"> <system.web> <authorization> <allow users="*"/> </authorization> </system.web> </location> ... </configuration>   Note that the access to the standard ScriptResource.axd and WebResource.axd is automatically allowed for all users (authenticated and unauthenticated), so if you use the ScriptManager instead of RadScriptManager - you will not face this problem. The authentication problem does not manifest when you disable script combining or use the CDN. Adding the above configuration section will make it work with RadScriptManagers combined script.   3. The IE6 browser fails to load the compressed script. The problem does not appear in any other browser. There is a well known bug in the older versions of IE6 which lose the first 2,048 bytes of data that are sent back from a Web server that uses HTTP compression. Latest versions of RadScriptManager does not compress the output at all if the client is IE6, but in the previous versions you need to manually disable the output compression to prevent the error. So, if you get the Sys is undefined error in IE6 - update to the latest version of RadControls or simply disable the output compression.   4. Requests to the *.axd files returns Error Code 404 - Not Found. This could  be fixed easily: Check in the IIS management console that the .axd extension (the default HTTP handler extension) is allowed:     Also check if the Verify if file exists checkbox is unchecked (click on the Edit button appearing in the previous screenshot to check). More information can be found in our troubleshooting article and from the ASP.NET QA team blog post   5. The virtual directory in IIS is not marked as Web Application. Converting it to Web Application should fix the problem.   6. Check for the <xhtmlConformance mode="Legacy"/> option in your web.config and remove it. It would be rather rare to become a victim of this exact case, but still have it in mind. Scott Guthrie describes it in more details   In the above points I mentioned several times the terms web resources, javascript output, compressed script. If you want to find out more about these please see the Web Resources Demystified series of my friend and colleague Atanas Korchev   I hope that one of the above solutions will help you get rid of the Sys is undefined error.   Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Thinking differently about BI delivery

  - by jamiet

  My day job involves implementing Business Intelligence (BI) solutions which, as I have said before, is simply about giving people the information they need to do their jobs. I’m always interested in learning about new ways of achieving that aim and that is my motivation for writing blog entries that are not concerned with SQL or SQL Server per se. Implementing BI systems usually involves hacking together a bunch third party products with some in-house “glue” and delivering information using some shiny, expensive web-based front-end tool; the list of vendors that supply such tools is big and ever-growing. No doubt these tools have their place and of late I have started to wonder whether they can be supplemented with different ways of delivering information. The problem I have with these separate web-based tools is exactly that – they are separate web-based tools. What’s the problem with that you might ask? I’ll explain! They force the information worker to go somewhere unfamiliar in order to get the information they need to do their jobs. Would it not be better if we could deliver information into the tools that those information workers are already using and not force them to go somewhere else? I look at the rise of blogging over recent years and I realise that what made them popular is that people can subscribe to RSS feeds and have information pushed to them in their tool of choice rather than them having to go and find the information for themselves in a tool that has been foisted upon them. Would it not be a good idea to adopt the principle of subscription for the benefit of delivering BI information as well? I think it would and in the rest of this blog entry I’ll outline such a scenario where the power of subscription could be used to enhance the delivery of information to information workers. Typical questions that information workers ask might be: What are my year-on-year sales figures? What was my footfall yesterday? How many widgets have I sold so far today? Each of those questions includes a time element and that shouldn’t surprise us, any BI system that I have worked on includes the dimension of time. Now, what do people use to view and organise their time-oriented information? Its not a trick question, they use a calendar and in the enterprise space more often than not that calendar is managed using Outlook. Given then that information workers are already looking at their calendar in Outlook anyway would it not make sense then to deliver information into that same calendar? Of course it would. Calendars are a great way of visualising information such as sales figures. Observe: Just in this single screenshot I have managed to convey a multitude of information. The information worker can see, at a glance, information about hourly/daily/weekly/monthly sales and, moreover, he/she is viewing that information right inside the tool that they use every day. There is no effort on the part of him/her, the information just appears hour after hour, day after day. Taking the idea further, each one of those calendar items could be a mini-dashboard in its own right. Double-clicking on an item could show a plethora of other information about that time slot such as breaking the sales down per region or year-over-year comparisons. Perhaps the title could employ a sparkline? Loads of possibilities. The point is that calendars are a completely natural way to visualise information; we should make more use of them! The real beauty of delivering information using calendars for us BI developers is that it should be so easy. In the case of Outlook we don’t need to write complicated VBA code that can go and manipulate a person’s calendar, simply publishing data in a format that Outlook can understand is sufficient and happily such formats already exist; iCalendar is the accepted format and the even more flexible xCalendar is hopefully on its way as well.   I’d like to make one last point and this one is with my SQL Server hat on. Reporting Services 2008 R2 introduced the ability to publish data as subscribable Atom feeds so it seems logical that it could also be a vehicle for delivering calendar feeds too. If you think this would be a good idea go and vote for it at Publish data as iCalendar feeds and please please please add some comments (especially if you vote it down). Work smarter, not harder! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• The design of a generic data synchronizer, or, an [object] that does [actions] with the aid of [helpers]

  - by acheong87

  I'd like to create a generic data-source "synchronizer," where data-source "types" may include MySQL databases, Google Spreadsheets documents, CSV files, among others. I've been trying to figure out how to structure this in terms of classes and interfaces, keeping in mind (what I've read about) composition vs. inheritance and is-a vs. has-a, but each route I go down seems to violate some principle. For simplicity, assume that all data-sources have a header-row-plus-data-rows format. For example, assume that the first rows of Google Spreadsheets documents and CSV files will have column headers, a.k.a. "fields" (to parallel database fields). Also, eventually, I would like to implement this in PHP, but avoiding language-specific discussion would probably be more productive. Here's an overview of what I've tried. Part 1/4: ISyncable class CMySQL implements ISyncable GetFields() // sql query, pdo statement, whatever AddFields() RemFields() ... _dbh class CGoogleSpreadsheets implements ISyncable GetFields() // zend gdata api AddFields() RemFields() ... _spreadsheetKey _worksheetId class CCsvFile implements ISyncable GetFields() // read from buffer AddFields() RemFields() ... _buffer interface ISyncable GetFields() AddFields($field1, $field2, ...) RemFields($field1, $field2, ...) ... CanAddFields() // maybe the spreadsheet is locked for write, or CanRemFields() // maybe no permission to alter a database table ... AddRow() ModRow() RemRow() ... Open() Close() ... First Question: Does it make sense to use an interface, as above? Part 2/4: CSyncer Next, the thing that does the syncing. class CSyncer __construct(ISyncable $A, ISyncable $B) Push() // sync A to B Pull() // sync B to A Sync() // Push() and Pull() only differ in direction; factor. // Sync()'s job is to make sure that the fields on each side // match, to add fields where appropriate and possible, to // account for different column-orderings, etc., and of // course, to add and remove rows as necessary to sync. ... _A _B Second Question: Does it make sense to define such a class, or am I treading dangerously close to the "Kingdom of Nouns"? Part 3/4: CTranslator? ITranslator? Now, here's where I actually get lost, assuming the above is passable. Sometimes, two ISyncables speak different "dialects." For example, believe it or not, Google Spreadsheets (accessed through the Google Data API "list feed") returns column headers lower-cased and stripped of all spaces and symbols! That is, sys_TIMESTAMP is systimestamp, as far as my code can tell. (Yes, I am aware that the "cell feed" does not strip the name so; however cell-by-cell manipulation is too slow for what I'm doing.) One can imagine other hypothetical examples. Perhaps even the data itself can be in different "dialects." But let's take it as given for now, and not argue this if possible. Third Question: How would you implement "translation"? Note: Taking all this as an exercise, I'm more interested in the "idealized" design, rather than the practical one. (God knows that shipped sailed when I began this project.) Part 4/4: Further Thought Here's my train of thought to demonstrate I've thunk, albeit unfruitfully: First, I thought, primitively, "I'll just modify CMySQL::GetFields() to lower-case and strip field names so they're compatible with Google Spreadsheets." But of course, then my class should really be called, CMySQLForGoogleSpreadsheets, and that can't be right. So, the thing which translates must exist outside of an ISyncable implementor. And surely it can't be right to make each translation a method in CSyncer. If it exists outside of both ISyncable and CSyncer, then what is it? (Is it even an "it"?) Is it an abstract class, i.e. abstract CTranslator? Is it an interface, since a translator only does, not has, i.e. interface ITranslator? Does it even require instantiation? e.g. If it's an ITranslator, then should its translation methods be static? (I learned what "late static binding" meant, today.) And, dear God, whatever it is, how should a CSyncer use it? Does it "have" it? Is it, "it"? Who am I? ...am I, "I"? I've attempted to break up the question into sub-questions, but essentially my question is singular: How does one implement an object A that conceptually "links" (has) two objects b1 and b2 that share a common interface B, where certain pairs of b1 and b2 require a helper, e.g. a translator, to be handled by A? Something tells me that I've overcomplicated this design, or violated a principle much higher up. Thank you all very much for your time and any advice you can provide.

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• What are the industry metrics for average spend on dev hardware and software? [on hold]

  - by RationalGeek

  I'm trying to budget for my dev shop and compare our budget items to industry expectations. I'm hoping to find some information on what percentage of a dev's salary is generally spent on tooling, both hardware and software. Where can I find such information? If instead there is a source that looks at raw dollars that is useful, too. I can extrapolate what I need from that. NOTE: Your anecdotal evidence from your own job will not be very helpful. I'm looking for industry average statistics from a credible source. EDIT: I'm reluctant to even keep this question going based on the passionate negative responses of commenters, but I do think this is valuable information (assuming anyone will care to answer) so let me make one attempt to clarify why I'm looking for this information, and then leave it at that. I'm not sure why understanding and validating my motives is a necessary step to providing the information, but apparently that is the case, so I will do my best. Firstly, let me respond to the idea that us "management types" shouldn't use these types of metrics to evaluate budgets. I agree in part. Ideally, you should spend whatever is necessary on developers in order to keep them fully happy and productive. And this is true of all employees. However, companies operate in a world of limited resources, and every dollar spent in one area means a dollar not spent in another. So it is not enough to simply say "I need to spend $10,000 per developer next year" without having some way to justify that position. One way to help justify it is to compare yourself against the industry. If it is the case that on average a software shops spends 5% (making up that number) of their total development budget (salaries being the large portion of the other 95%, for arguments sake), and I'm only spending 3%, it helps in the justification process. So, it is not my intent to use this information to limit what I spend on developers, but rather to arm myself with the necessary justification to spend what I need to spend on developers to give them the best tools I can. I have been a developer for many years and I understand the need for proper tooling. Next, let's examine the idea that even considering the relationship between a spend on developer salaries and developer tooling is ludicrous and should be banned from budgetary thinking. As Jimmy Hoffa put it in their comment, it's like saying "I'm going to spend no more than 10% of median employee salary on light bulbs and coffee from now on.". Well, yes, it is like saying that, and from a budgeting perspective, this is a useful way to look at things. If you know that, on average, an employee consumes X dollars of coffee a year, then you can project a coffee budget based on that. And you can compare it to an industry metric to understand where you fall: do you spend more on coffee than other companies or less? Why might this be? If you are a coffee supply manager, that seems like a useful thought process. The same seems to hold true for developers. Now, on to the idea that I need to compare "apples to apples" and only look at other shops that are in the same place geographically, the same business, the same application architecture, and the same development frameworks. I guess if I could find such a statistic that said "a shop that is exactly identical to yours spends X on developer tooling" it would be wonderful. But there is plenty of value in an average statistic. Here's an analogy: let's say you are working on a household budget and need to decide how much to spend on groceries. Is it enough to know that the average consumer spends 15% on groceries and therefore decide that you will budget exactly 15%? No. You have to tweak your budget based on your individual needs and situation. But the generalized statistic does help in this evaluation. You can know if your budget is grossly off from what others are doing, and this can help you figure out why this is. So, I will concede the point that it would be better to find statistics that align to my shop, though I think any statistics I could find would be useful for what I'm doing. In that light, let's say that my shop is mostly focused on ASP.NET web applications. That doesn't map perfectly to reality because large enterprises have very heterogenous IT environments. But if I was going to pick one technology that is our focus that would be it. But, if you were to point me at some statistics that are related to a Linux shop doing embedded Java applications, I would still find it useful as a point of comparison. SUMMARY: Let me try to rephrase my question. I'm trying to find industry metrics on how much dev shops spend on developer tooling, both hardware and software. I don't so much care whether it is expressed as a percentage of total budget or as X dollars per dev or as Y percentage of salary. Any metric would be useful. If there are metrics that are specific to ASP.NET dev shops in the Northeast US, all the better, but I would be happy to find anything.

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